


Only Found in Lost Cities

by Xparrot



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: (so does Carlos), Cecil is scary, Crossover, Gen, I love him, M/M, POV Outsider, Tourists in Night Vale, but yeah so scary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 02:39:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xparrot/pseuds/Xparrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Rodney go looking for a former Atlantis scientist with annoyingly perfect hair, and end up in the most scientifically interesting community in America.  Now the question is, will they ever be able to leave...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is all Gnine's fault. ...Or so I want to say, but we've recently been rewatching SGA so it probably was inevitable. I thank and blame her for her support regardless.
> 
> It's a short multi-parter, should be finished posting within the week. Set approximately now, so several years after the Stargate: Atlantis finale, with a little vague post-canon speculation.

John Sheppard frowned at the diagram on the screen. "Rodney, did you try to blow up Atlantis again?"

"It wasn't me! And no one was trying to blow up anything—and _again_? Excuse me, when have I—"

"What exactly is the problem, Dr. McKay?" Woolsey interjected, with a calm borne of years of experience. 

Rodney took a breath and started over from the top. This being his third time through, John tuned out of most of it. Geothermic energy modules overloading due to imbalance in the blah blah blah reverse the polarity blah blah blah must patch it or the city goes up in smoke. Or really just one pylon and that was the worst case scenario; but if it took out the stardrive there weren't any Replicators left to repair it, and John couldn't take the idea of Atlantis being grounded again, after flying her. But they could really use the geothermal energy as a back-up for the ZPM. "So what do you need to fix it?"

"That's just it," Rodney said. "I can't fix it."

There was a peculiar irritated twist to his mouth as he said _'I'_ that John recognized as something that would be embarrassment, in a man with less of an ego than Rodney McKay. "So who _can_ fix it?"

 

* * *

 

It turned out that the original patching of the energy modules hadn't been considered a priority, so had been left in the hands of a few junior researchers, some years back. The project had been interrupted by Atlantis coming to Earth, and never resumed upon their return to the Pegasus Galaxy. The problem was that the project leader, the only one who'd really understood what they were doing, was no longer on Atlantis. "And it's not like I have the time to make sure every scientist under me follows the proper protocols for recording research, and doesn't take notes that might as well have been encrypted for all their legibility," Rodney complained.

"You mean you can't reconstruct the project because you can't read this guy's _handwriting?_ " John asked.

"No, it's all on the computer; but he had unique—by which I mean idiotically non-intuitive—ways of organizing the—"

"Okay, so we ask the SGC to send him back for a couple weeks," John said. "Or schedule a teleconference over the Stargate."

"Only if we can find him," Rodney said. "I'm not sure he's still with the SGC. He was only here in Pegasus for about a year, before Atlantis was back in the Milky Way."

"Oh, one of those." They'd lost a lot of personnel, the six months Atlantis had been in dry-dock on Earth—scientists lured away to the private sector, military offered choice positions in mercenary companies. "But with SGC clearances, no one gets too far. What's the guy's name?"

"Um," Rodney said. "That's the other problem...see, I've got the project notes, but the personnel assignments were lost in that microchip-eating-bacteria incident a couple years back—"

"Rodney, he worked for you for a year! You assigned him an important project!"

"I have a hundred people working for me in a year! Don't worry, I just have to review the personnel files—I kind of remember what he looked like. His hair, I remember his hair was really annoying."

John smirked. "Like mine?"

Rodney made a face back. "No, not _rakish_ —it was all thick and perfect. He was American, usually went by his first name, what was it? Cristos, Carlino—something like that..."

The guy's name turned out to be Carlos. It took Rodney half an hour to find him in the database.

It took thirty times that for the SGC to dial back to say that Carlos wasn't with the Stargate program anymore. And wasn't anywhere else, either, as far as they could tell.

"How do you _lose track_ of a guy with access to the highest-classified secrets on Earth?" John demanded.

"That's what the IOA wants you to find out," Woolsey said. "They've authorized you and Dr. McKay for three days' leave on Earth, to track this man down."

John stared at the director in disbelief. "They want us to go back to Earth? Just to find a scientist?"

"My understanding is that they're hoping Dr. McKay can get the information needed to make the repairs, without having to re-instate his security clearances. You're accompanying him because I told them that it was unlikely you'd let Rodney go alone," Woolsey said. "—Before you ask, they put their foot down about Teyla and Ronon going, too. I'm sorry, John."

John nodded understanding, if not happily, processing this. If Rodney needed to be there in person, then the SGC or the IOA wasn't expecting them to be able to have a phone conference. And if John, with his special ops training, were being sent along as back-up—alone, without the rest of their team—was this going to be an off-the-books rescue mission, or an interrogation of a double agent? Did the IOA suspect the scientist of selling out? To who? Where on Earth would be potentially dangerous enough to be worth bringing him and Rodney over from Atlantis? John frowned. "Where the hell do they think this guy _is_?"

 

* * *

 

Once back Earth-side in the SGC, it took Rodney nearly twenty-four hours to locate the scientist Carlos. Ironically, he turned out to be almost local. Also, apparently, insane, according to Rodney. "He worked for the private sector for a few years; then he won a major grant for independent study of obscure phenomena," Rodney explained, as John munched on another bag of microwave popcorn. Corn was hard to come by in Pegasus; popcorn that didn't require half a dozen requisition forms was one of the only things John missed about his home planet. 

"Doesn't sound that crazy to me," John said. "Aren't a lot of SGC scientists into fringe science like extraterrestrials and teleportation tech—for obvious reasons?" 

"That wasn't the crazy part. After he got the grant, he got together a research team, and moved to—tried to move to, I should say—Night Vale. _Night Vale,_ of all places!"

Rodney rolled his eyes. John cocked an eyebrow at him. "So can we get a flight there tomorrow, track him down in person?"

"Oh, sure, I'll just go on Southwest and look for specials on extra-dimension trips on an invisible jet!"

John cocked his other eyebrow. Rodney flapped his hands impatiently. "Night Vale! Come on, I must've complained about it to you before. It's a joke, a dumb one, at Area 51. Some idiot there—one of the test pilots, was my guess—set up a ham radio and started sending out these broadcasts, making fun of our research. Most of it was nonsense, cribbed from Twilight Zone and Twin Peaks; but some of it was spot-on. It was a major security breach and it would've gotten someone fired, if they'd ever found out who on the base was behind it. The signal was really weak, difficult to track, but if you tuned your radio at the right times you could pick it up."

"Was your guy Carlos at Area 51 back then?" John asked. "Maybe he was the one doing it, and this research grant was a joke?"

"He only was assigned to Area 51 a few months before coming to Atlantis, five years ago," Rodney said. "The Night Vale hoax has been going on since I first worked there, over a decade ago. No, he must have heard the broadcast when he was at Area 51, and when he flipped his lid he decided it was real."

He wouldn't be the first former SGC employee to suffer a mental breakdown; the job was stressful, and its secrets even more so, especially to scientists. Still... "When did he get this grant?"

"About a year and a half ago," Rodney said.

"So what's he been doing for the last year and a half?"

"Driving around the desert searching for a town that doesn't exist? Digging in the sand with his hands and howling at the moon? Blowing all the grant money in Vegas? How should I know, do I look like a crazy person?"

John opted not to answer that one. "You said he had a team of researchers. Maybe one of them knows what happened to him?"

Rodney grimaced. "I can't find them."

" _Any_ of them?"

"...No. A few have published in the last year—small pieces in esoteric journals—but emails to the corresponding authors all come back blocked, and none of them seem to have current addresses or phone numbers."

"So try their old numbers?"

"I have," Rodney said. "I tried Carlos's last listed number, too."

"And?"

Rodney pulled out his phone and placed a call, then handed the phone to John.

John listened as the phone rang once; then the phone company's generic female voice came on to tell him, _"Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please—"_

The recording squealed with feedback, then was replaced by a much deeper male baritone, intoning with the same instructive patience, _"—do not ever dial this number again, for the sake of your unborn children, your singular view of the universe, and_ / _or your sanity."_

Rodney hit the cancel button. "It's like that on every number I've tried with that area code."

"Huh," John said. "What about the addresses?"

It turned out that Carlos and most of his team had left forwarding addresses to the supposedly non-existent Night Vale. Trying to look up the addresses on online maps proved fruitless; the browser crashed every time any part of the addresses were entered into the search field. "It's no good," Rodney said. "I've tried in four different browsers on five different computers—"

"Just one more," John said, squinting at the screen as he hit enter. Every time the browser crashed, an error message popped up and vanished before he could read it. This time he caught the words _"illegal access"_ and _" bloodstone circle"_ before the message box closed.

"The same thing happens if you try to search for 'Night Vale'. It's a prank," Rodney said. "Some idiot coder at Area 51 has expanded the joke—it's probably a hack embedded in the SGC software, to make Night Vale more _mysterious_ ," and he waggled his fingers by his head in a manner intended to indicate spooky ghosts but more successfully made his head resemble a jellyfish.

"Have you tried looking for it by zip code?" John asked, looking at the number appending all the addresses. "That'd give you an idea where the place is, at least."

Searching for the zip code itself proved impossible; but they found a map showing all the codes of the nation. There was no location that matched the number, but they were able to narrow down approximately where the town of Night Vale should've been: in the middle of an empty wasteland that on Google Earth only showed as flat gray from a single old satellite photo. No one had bothered to send a survey plane over it, much less take street views from the single state highway which cut across the area.

"Still," John said, tapping the onscreen map. "That's only a few hours' drive out of Area 51."

Rodney gave him a look. "We're _not_ going to drive out into the middle of the scorching desert just because you're getting stir-crazy!"

"Am not." John—with effort—didn't glance at the thick gray walls of the SGC's underground tunnels around them, so different from Atlantis's luminous halls. "But do you have any better leads?"

They caught the sub-orbital shuttle flight out from Colorado to Area 51 the next morning, and were on the road by ten AM. John drove—despite Rodney's sarcastic comments that a Jeep was hardly a puddle-jumper—while Rodney fiddled with the AC and glowered at the relentlessly sunlit desert. "I always hated it out here. It's so hot and dry and sandy and _boring_."

"Peaceful," John suggested. "Scenic."

"Of course _you_ like the desert. _You_ like Antarctica, it's the biggest desert on the planet!"

"Not hot, though," John pointed out.

"But how could anyone have lived on Atlantis— _Atlantis!_ —and then come _here,_ " and Rodney waved his hands wide enough to indicate the surrounding wasteland, and possibly the entire planet while he was at it, "and be satisfied?"

"Got me," John said. He honestly had liked Antarctica's stark frozen purity—there were no illusions in Antarctica, just you and the ice. But not the way he loved Atlantis's breathtaking splendor, the ancient yet delicate spires, the piers over the ocean waves, the lights on the city's thousand towers. Nine years and they still hadn't charted even half of them. Atlantis was so generous with her beauty, from the moment they'd stepped foot on her and she had glowed to life around them. For all the dangers of the Pegasus Galaxy—for all the dangers in Atlantis herself—John couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

He didn't have to say any of that to Rodney, obviously; his teammate felt the same way.

"It's already almost one, and what are we going to have for lunch?" Rodney asked. "There's nothing here. We should turn around before we run out of gas—"

"There's apples and power bars in the knapsack's front pocket," John said. "And there's a spare can of gas in the trunk. Also that looks like something up ahead."

The something was a sign—not a green and white highway sign; this sign was purple, with black lettering that was difficult to read even in the direct sun, especially with the waves of heat radiating from the black paint.

It read, 'Night Vale, 13 miles'.

"If this is a prank, then the guys at Area 51 have too much time on their hands," John remarked.

Rodney switched off John's Johnny Cash album and turned on the radio. The scan button flipped through the whole list and offered nothing but static; but when he went through the stations manually he picked up one at the very bottom of the dial.

The broadcast seemed to be a commercial for a local pizza place, approved of by four out of five angels. The announcer also assured his audience that the brick oven's rift to a fiery netherworld had been sealed, so there was no longer any concern of a clawed talon reaching out from under the mozzarella and attempting to pull your soul out through your nostrils.

"Yes, this nonsense!" Rodney snapped, annoyed. "That's what it's always like."

"That voice," John remarked. "That's the same guy as on the phone recording, isn't it?"

"They really do have too much free time," Rodney said. "This is the clearest I've ever heard the broadcast, too; usually it's half blotted out by static. The morons think it sounds spookier that way, I guess."

"Or the transmitter is actually out here," John said.

They drove on through the desert, alongside a mesa that climbed higher and higher above them. A few minutes later Rodney squinted out through the windshield, pointed ahead. "What's that?"

There was a blocky shape rising up from the dunes in the distance. "Looks like a sports stadium?" John said. 

"Probably it's a long-distance mirage. Projected light from Tucson. Or maybe Santa Fe."

"...You have no idea where we actually are right now, do you?"

"Neither does the GPS," Rodney retorted. The screen had started blinking when they passed the 13 miles sign; now it was glowing a solid machine-death blue and occasionally flashing random symbols. The voice system had also glitched, repeating _"Take the next take the next take the next"_ like a chant until Rodney switched off the volume.

The radio was still on. The commercial break ended, the announcer said, "Listeners, we have reports of a car—a Jeep, I am told—driving into Night Vale. The vehicle, by its coloring, appears to be from the military. Which military is at present unclear, so when it passes by, citizens are advised to stay indoors, and refrain from throwing salt, screeching while pounding one's chest, or making any of the other traditional gestures to welcome tourists. The Sheriff's secret police are watching the Jeep now, so there is no cause for alarm."

"I admit it, that is genuinely creepy," John said. "How do they have eyes on us?" He tried to peer up through the windshield to see if there was a bird above—though he couldn't hear any chopper—but Rodney shouted at him to watch the road.

The highway up ahead bent around the mesa. As they passed between the dunes, the stadium came into better view. Beside it sat another large structure, so incongruous that John couldn't recognize it at first.

Rodney did. "Is that a set of _docks_? In the desert?"

"Docks would explain why that pile of rubble next to it looks like the leftovers of a waterfront," John remarked. "...Also, is it just me, or is the sun further east than it was a minute ago?"

"Oka-y," Rodney said, breathing out the word with a hint of nervous tremor. "Way, way, _way_ too much time on their hands..."


	2. Chapter 2

By the time they drove into Night Vale's town center, even Rodney had to admit that this was a little much for a prank. The pizza place from the commercial was here, nestled among a barber shop, a bank, a post office, and the other expected small-town establishments huddled along the main street. Most were in brick or quaint clapboard, sun-bleached and weathered. There were a few churches as well, though none had a cross topping their spires, but symbols neither John nor Rodney recognized. "Local cults, probably," Rodney said. "People get weird out here. I think it's too much sun."

"Yeah, maybe don't say that quite so loudly when we're actually talking to people?" John suggested. Though privately he thought Rodney had a point. At the end of the main street was a taller building, probably the town hall, which loomed over the street in a distracting way. Maybe it was how the roof was a little top-heavy. Or too asymmetrical. Or something. The architecture was definitely peculiar, but John couldn't decide exactly what was wrong with it. Studying it for any length of time made his eyes ache, like trying to look directly at the sun.

There was no helpful sign labeling a laboratory or Scientists Go Here, so John parked by the pizza place. Considering how they'd passed no one on the road into town, there were a surprising number of cars on the street now. The pizzeria was half-full, with regulars to tell by the way everyone turned to look as he and Rodney walked in. John was familiar with those looks from visiting a hundred alien planets, the half-curious, half-wary attention of natives evaluating strangers.

Breaking bread tended to be a good way to make friends, so they each ordered two slices of cheese pizza at the counter and seated themselves. The pizza looked normal enough, but Rodney sniffed at it before eating, same as he would on an off-world mission, then whispered to John, "Is there any citrus on this?"

"Rodney, it's just pizza," John said, then reconsidered when he took a bite. It was definitely pizza, insofar as pizza can be defined as some kind of oven-baked starch with some kind of sauce and cheese on top. Beyond that he wasn't sure. He chewed thoughtfully, assessing the various flavors—mint, oats, was that a hint of lime after all?—swallowed and said, "Maybe you should stick to the power bars."

The waitress brought over Rodney's coffee—which fortunately did smell normal, and not de-caf either, forestalling an incident—and smiled at them with cautious friendliness. "Can I get you guys anything else?"

"Actually," John said, pulling on a flirtatious smile in return and ignoring Rodney's rolling eyes, "there is something. We came here to visit a friend who lives in the area, but we seem to have gotten turned around. Do you know where Canyon Drive is?"

"Oh, sure—today's Wednesday, right? Then it's right off of Gable, just down the block. —Unless your friend was on the east side, in which case I'm very sorry. Can I see the address?"

John was digging in his pocket for the printout with Carlos's last known address when Rodney kicked him in the shin. Stifling a yelp, John shot his teammate a glare, but Rodney just tipped his head meaningfully toward the ceiling.

Or rather, the voice coming from the ceiling—the pizzeria's radio was tuned to the local community station, where the host was winding up a monologue about the thundering beat of destiny, "—This has been traffic. Now, more on our military visitors. Though their Jeep is painted in mottled camouflage patterns, the men in it are camouflaged in ordinary clothes, passing as ordinary men. They say they are travelers from far away. They have not said how far. When you look into their eyes, you can see that this is because there are no words to express the distance they have traveled, to come to our humble town."

John glanced at Rodney but didn't see any distance in his eyes, just confusion and irritability and a hint of alarm.

"They say they are looking for a friend," the voice on the radio continued. "But who of us is not looking for that, in this uncertain and lonely world?"

John scanned the pizzeria's occupants. A couple of the more curious ducked and broke off from staring when he met their eyes; but none of them or anyone else was on a phone or radio, that he could see. So who was eavesdropping, to broadcast this in real-time?

"Mister?" the waitress asked. "You got that address?"

"Right, here." John unfolded the printout and handed it over. 

The waitress read it, frowned, and then brightened. "Oh! Is your friend Carlos, by any chance?"

"Yeah, you know him?" John asked.

"Well, that's lucky—this is an old address, he's not there anymore. He moved last month—"

"—Two months," supplied a little old man in a bowler hat in the next booth. "After the condos, remember?"

"Of course, two months," the waitress corrected. "I can get his current address, but he won't be there anyway, this time of day; he'll be in his lab."

"Where's that?" Rodney asked.

The waitress hesitated. "He's a very busy man—he and all the scientists, they have important jobs; they really shouldn't be disturbed when they're working."

"It's okay," Rodney said, "I'm a scientist, too. Cristos—"

"— _Carlos,_ " John corrected, _sotto voce_.

"—Carlos is a colleague of mine. That's why we're here, because of the work he did before—we need his help with one of our projects elsewhere."

"Oh." The waitress's smile didn't change, but her eyes shifted, almost imperceptibly, like a lizard's protective inner eyelid flicking closed and open again. "In that case, I'll be right back with you. I just need to check on _something_." She paused for a moment as if expecting a response, then walked off, heels clicking on the tile.

"Thanks, that was _so_ helpful," Rodney said, but under his breath—after nine years of off-world missions he'd learned something of diplomacy. 

"At least we know we're in the right town," John said, taking another bite of pizza. It wasn't only to see what other ingredients he could identify; the flavor was growing on him. (He hoped not literally.)

"It would help if this place at least had air conditioning. That's it, I'm getting a power bar," Rodney said, finishing his coffee and standing up from the table. "You can charm the info out of the natives better alone anyway. When you're done I'll be outside, looking for the lab or prostrate with heatstroke, depending."

"Sure, stick me with the bill. And don't use up all the gas running the Jeep's AC," John called after him, waving goodbye with a pizza crust. After he finished his second slice he pulled over Rodney's untouched plate, listening to the radio, which was now playing a series of rhythmic clicks. Not Morse code, but a pattern he almost understood—

The waitress came back. "Sorry for the wait—oh, where's your friend? Did he not like the pizza?"

"Allergies," John explained. "The pizza's great."

"That's too bad. What allergies does he have?"

John would've answered, if he hadn't suddenly become aware of the crawling feeling of being observed—the man in the bowler in the next booth was listening, as intently as the waitress was staring at him, with her pen poised over her order pad, like she was going to note down Rodney's allergies along with John's dessert order. "Nothing serious," he said. "Don't worry about it, we brought snacks."

"Besides food, is he allergic to any medications, that you're aware of?" the waitress asked. "Or insect bites or stings, animal dander, metals, or textiles?"

"Uh," John said, pushing back his chair, "can I have the check now?"

As he was paying, the radio host came back on the broadcast, saying, "It seems that the travelers are here for Carlos—our own Carlos, the scientist. It's only to be expected that his intellect's fame extends beyond our borders; but what do these men want of it? Why would they cross so many eons of light to find him? And after coming so far, could anything stop them from going farther, in the name of their quest..."

There was nothing in particular different about the voice on the radio, no obvious threat; the baritone was as even and distinctly enunciated as before. Perhaps it was the precision of the syllables which made John's pulse start pounding and his strides speed up, so by the time he pushed out of the pizzeria's doors he was breaking into a sprint.

The Jeep was parked half a block down. John didn't see Rodney out on the sidewalk, nor taking shelter in the shade between the buildings. He wasn't behind the Jeep, either, or sitting inside it. The vehicle was still shut and locked.

With the sun still high in the sky, the desert air was mercilessly hot, as bad as Kandahar at its worst. John wiped his brow as he turned a circle, surveying the empty street. There were no other pedestrians out in the heat; and the cars passing by all had tinted windows, no way to see who was driving.

"Rodney!" John shouted.

No one answered. When he looked up he saw a dark dot overhead—a chopper by how it was moving, silhouetted against the azure sky. He couldn't hear it, no matter how he strained—maybe it was just a toy radio-controlled helicopter, smaller than it appeared. It was hard to judge scale in the cloudless sky.

He looked back down, and saw a glint at the curb, other than the shimmering of the heated pavement. Crouching, John picked up the discarded power bar wrapper.

As he straightened, there was a clicking hiss and the Jeep's radio came on, though the key to the ignition was still in John's pocket. The announcer said, "Listeners, I have a breaking report: one of our newly come travelers was littering in the street. As you know, the Sheriff's secret police have been cracking down on this hazardous practice, endangering both pedestrians and motorists as it does. I urge all of you not to follow the imprudent examples of strangers to our town; though they may be more worldly than us, they are not more wise. Heed instead the justice dealt to those miscreants who flaunt the law, wherever they come from..."


	3. Chapter 3

John touched the concealed holster under his shirt, verifying his sidearm. Then he marched back to the pizzeria.

The man in the bowler hat who had been listening so intently was gone; but the waitress was still there. John took her arm to get her attention. "Excuse me," he asked, fixing a calm smile on his face. "Can you tell me where to find the police?"

The waitress frowned at him. "The police...?"

"I think my friend—the man with me just now—was arrested somehow. I need to get over to the police station so I can sort this out."

"How should I know where the police station is?!" the waitress cried, tearing her arm free like John had tried to put a wrestling hold on her. Her eyes were wide, frightened, though she wasn't looking at John but staring around the pizzeria, up at the lights, at the tables and the patrons' shocked faces turned towards her. "I have no idea where the secret police are stationed, it's _secret_ , of course! I swear, I'm a good citizen, I pay my taxes, I keep my windows open in clement weather—I'd never ask such a thing—"

"Um," John said, taking a non-threatening step back from her. "All right, I believe you—"

The radio came back from a commercial, the host's even baritone taking on a calm but urgent edge. "Listeners, there is a situation developing at Big Rico's! One of the travelers is threatening the waitstaff, demanding privileged information. The man is armed and the Sheriff's secret police warn that he is dangerous, as much for what he does not know as for what he does. Do not approach him, citizens; and do not approach Big Rico's. If this man has already approached you, then hide—hide your face and cover your ears, and sing the secret word which will protect your soul, whatever harm befalls your body. If you have forgotten your secret word and happen to keep a cheat sheet in your wallet, you can use one hand to check it—"

"What the—I'm not a danger to anyone! Honest, folks!" John put up his hands, open-palmed and harmless. "I'm just looking for my friend—" It didn't do any good; everyone in the pizzeria had dropped to the floor, burying their faces in their knees with their hands pressed over their ears. Except for a few digging frantically in their pockets or purses, they were murmuring, the low mumbles blurring into an unintelligible hum, rising around him like the heat off the asphalt outside. 

John had visited hundreds of planets in another galaxy, but this was still one of the weirder reactions he'd ever gotten anywhere. "Okay," he said, backing toward the exit, careful not to tread on any prostrate person. "I'm leaving now, okay, I'm not going to hurt anybody—"

He was nudging the door open with his foot when he heard outside the unmistakable _thump-thump_ of an incoming chopper, rattling the window glass in its frames. John froze, not sure whether he should turn himself over to the arriving authorities; or avoid them until he figured out what the situation was, and more importantly where Rodney was.

On the other hand, if these authorities came in after him, with all these people around—

At the back of the restaurant came the crashing jangle of a falling pot; then the door to the kitchen swung open. John dropped his hand to his gun, but it wasn't a uniformed officer or a SWAT team, but a dark-haired man in a white coat, staring at him in some confusion.

"Colonel Sheppard?" the man said, looking at least as startled as John. "—Um, I think you'd better come with me."

John glanced out the window behind him, where a blue helicopter was maneuvering into position over the street. Figures in riot gear and balaclavas were shimmying down ropes dangling from the chopper.

The man in the white coat beckoned urgently. John vaulted three Night Vale citizens and the counter and followed him into the pizzeria's kitchen. They passed the brick oven, blasting infernally hot—had that netherworld rift really been sealed after all?—and out the back door into a dingy back alley, in cool shadows even in the middle of the afternoon.

The top of the helicopter was still visible over the roof. John and his comrade ran for it, tearing through a labyrinth of alleyways (far more than there ought to be, given the limited length of the main street, and John could've sworn at least twice they were running upside-down, kicking up dust into the ground overhead) until the chopper's deafening roar was reduced to a distant, harmless patter.

At last they stopped behind the blackened husk of a burned building that appeared to have once been a guitar store. John panted the hot desert air, wiping away the stinging sweat dripping in his eyes. The man in the white coat doubled over, gasping desperately for breath, like Rodney on his first year of field missions. John gave his shoulder a pat, said, "Thanks. Um...Carlos, I presume?"

The man nodded to John's shoes. "Yes," he wheezed, gulping air as he struggled to pull himself upright. "We—met briefly. When I was first assigned to Atlantis." Breath mostly caught, Carlos straightened the lapels of his lab coat, pushed his hair out of his eyes—Rodney was right about the hair; even sweat-soaked it was thick and black and remarkably glossy—and met John's gaze. His eyes were steady, calm. He didn't look crazy, which put him way ahead of the rest of the town. "If I may ask, Colonel, what are you doing here?"

"We came to find you," John said. "Atlantis needs your help." Though given the quick-response helicopters and the secret police, he wondered if Carlos might need it more. Maybe this was a rescue mission after all.

Carlos nodded. "That's what it sounded like Cecil was saying, but I wasn't sure. Who came with you? Someone else from the SGC?"

"Dr. McKay."

Carlos winced. "...I was afraid of that."

"He just wants a little of your time," John said. "He has some questions about the geothermal energy modules project you were working on. You'd only have to come back to Atlantis if you want to...though if you want to, there's a place for you there. Or anything else we can do for you." Which might have been overstepping a bit, but then, Rodney hadn't actually had anything negative to say about the guy's science, which in McKay terms was high praise indeed. Plus John was partial to anyone who saved his life. "But first we need to find McKay—he's disappeared. I think he might've been arrested. ...For littering?"

"Yes, it's been a problem lately, attracts gremlins, you know," Carlos said distractedly, then shook his head. "But this is a misunderstanding; we ought to be able to work it out, before Dr. McKay says anything he really shouldn't—he's not going to start talking about Ancients or ascension, is he?"

"Since it's top secret, he better not," John said. "Though why does that matter—"

"—Not that I'm certain they have anything to do with the Tiered Heavens, but better safe than sorry," Carlos said, mostly to himself. "Regardless, we should hurry. This way."

"You know where the police station is?" John asked.

"No idea," Carlos said. "But the sheriff isn't who you want right now anyway. Cecil will be more help—he's got the mayor's number, if we need it; but I don't think that will be necessary. I could call, but he's on the air now—easier to go in person, we're only a block away—"

"Hold on." John stopped at the alley's edge. "Who's this Cecil?"

Carlos blinked, surprised. "Right, you're new—you might've heard him already, though. Cecil is the Voice of Night Vale."

"Is that the guy on the radio? You know him?"

An odd smile crossed Carlos's lips. "Oh, everyone here knows Cecil. But yes, I know him personally."

"He didn't sound like he was mine or Rodney's biggest fan," John said.

"That's why I want to him to meet you," Carlos said. "Cecil can be opinionated, but not inflexibly so. And he's very protective; maybe a little over-protective, especially when it comes to strangers. He's...hmm. Provincial isn't quite the word for it... Have you lived in many small towns, Colonel?"

"Some," John said. Even Atlantis, for all its many towers, only held a small number of people; it was a close community, insular out of necessity. In a place as dangerous as Atlantis, survival depended on knowing everyone—knowing you could rely on everybody to do what was best for the city. If an ignorant outsider disrupted that balance...

...By _littering_ , though? "We didn't come here to cause any trouble," John said. "We didn't come here for Night Vale at all—just for you, Doc."

"I know," Carlos said. "The problem is that Cecil does, too; but hopefully we can work that out. Come on, there's an intermittent interdimensional rift at the crosswalk at the end of this block; that's our best chance of avoiding the helicopters," and he headed down the alley at a determined jog.

John paused a moment to weigh the risks of trusting an evidently mad scientist, against his chances of single-handedly breaking Rodney out of a prison with unknown defenses that he had yet to locate. Then he sighed and followed Carlos.


	4. Chapter 4

The community radio station was behind the town hall, and its steel tower was as headache-inducing to look at directly. John didn't bother to try, instead kept his head ducked as he followed Carlos inside the station. The scientist seemed to know his way around, navigating them through rows of empty glass-walled sound booths, covered in dust and spider webs, to the one door at the hall's very end with a red light blinking over it.

Inside, an older teenager was sitting at the switchboard. She put her finger to her lips to indicate silence, but smiled a welcome to Carlos behind it.

In the sound booth, the radio host sat with his back to the window. His broadcast was playing over the speakers, the baritone muted and flattened by the sound-dampening walls: "—We can only hope that Carlos is safe, that all he knows now will not become all he ever was; and that there is more for him to know—that there is more for him to know here, in Night Vale. We can only hope for this, and go now, to the weather."

A song started playing that John was pretty sure he'd heard once before, in a dream he'd had the night before he'd first entered the Stargate. Before he caught more than the opening lyrics, Carlos pushed past him into the sound booth, to say to the host, with mild exasperation, "I'm safe, and of course there's more for me to know here. There will _always_ be more for me to know here; you should know that by now."

"Carlos!" The baritone was brighter, louder, as if off the air even the foam walls couldn't dampen it. The host spun around in his chair, bounced up to seize Carlos's arms—not an attack but a friendly gesture. "You're here? You're still here?"

Carlos smiled back at him, even as he shook his head. "Really, Cecil, you know I'm first a scientist. Where else would I find a more scientifically interesting city?"

"Perhaps not in America," Cecil said, "or on Earth—but beyond..." and his gaze unlocked from Carlos's face long enough to shift to John behind them.

"About that," Carlos said, gently disentangling himself from Cecil's grasp, though he kept a hand resting on Cecil's arm. "This is why I came, to introduce you. Colonel, this is Cecil, the Voice of Night Vale. Cecil, this is Colonel John Sheppard."

John had been trying to avoid a direct line of sight with the radio host, but that was difficult when the man was looking straight at him. Though looking back at him was nearly as difficult. Cecil, John thought, was the opposite of an obedient child: he was meant to be heard but not seen.

It wasn't anything in particular that John could put his finger on. The guy wasn't a reptilian-skinned wraith, didn't have a goa'uld's glowing eyes. He mostly looked like an ordinary man, not a shock-jock but a professional broadcaster, neatly dressed in a purple shirt and black tie. Maybe it was his smile—it was polite enough, but there were more teeth showing than there should be. Or not enough of them. Or they were the wrong shape. Something, anyway.

John held out his hand. Cecil didn't take it. Not until Carlos said, with pointed patience and his hand still on Cecil's arm, "Colonel Sheppard was the military head of a facility I worked at, a few years before I came here to Night Vale. He—as well as my director, Dr. McKay—saved my life and the lives of everyone at the facility on multiple occasions. I wouldn't be here now, were it not for both of them."

"Oh!" Cecil said, and his smile was suddenly right, or at least more right than it had been. "Very pleased to meet you, Colonel Sheppard." He shook John's hand, a firm assured grip, though he pulled away a fraction of a second too soon. Or else John flinched from it first.

"Colonel Sheppard and Dr. McKay came here to ask for my help," Carlos explained. "They want my advice on a project I previously worked on. I shouldn't have to go back to the facility myself, just review my work with Dr. McKay. And once they have what they need, they'll be leaving—by tonight, probably?"

"Should be," John said. "As soon as Rodney gets the chance to talk with you—after we get him out of wherever the police took him." He looked at Cecil. "The doc here seems to think you could help with that?" 

"I could?" Cecil said. He didn't do 'innocent' much better than he did smiles.

"Cecil," Carlos said, his tone like he was saying _please._

And Cecil replied, " _Carlos_ ," in a tone John couldn't recognize at all. Though when Cecil leaned in, he got it. Carlos turned away at the last instant, with an anxious glance at John, so Cecil kissed his cheek instead of his lips; but Cecil didn't seem to mind, just beamed again at Carlos before ducking back inside the recording booth to resume his show.

Carlos was still peeking nervously at John. John tried to give him a reassuring and unconcerned look back. Even if Don't Ask Don't Tell hadn't been repealed, Carlos wasn't military anyway, and also no longer on Atlantis. So it was absolutely none of John's business whether the man was into improbably creepy community radio hosts.

Cecil did have a great voice for the job, John had to admit, as his baritone came flowing over the speakers.

"Listeners," Cecil said, "allow me a moment to editorialize. We have all done things which, as time passed, we came to regret. We have all been places where we thought we belonged, that later we realized were not where we should be after all. This is why the right to change is one of the greatest of all the inalienable rights of existence. Just as we all have the right to choose what we do and where we go, so too do we have the right to change. To become better than who we were; to seek more than what we had. Even the lowest criminal may strive for redemption, and who are we—who are any of us—to deny them that chance?

"To hold a person imprisoned in a place, or imprisoned by opinion, are both sins as great as any as that person might have committed. While such wrongs may be necessary for the community's rights, a society strong enough to punish should also be strong enough to forgive. To give a second chance to those who honestly want to change. For isn't that no more than what we'd ask for ourselves?"

Carlos tapped John on the shoulder. "Come on," he whispered, risking the switchboard intern's glare. "I'll take you to the most common drop-off point."

Carlos drove them in his hybrid. The drop-off point proved to be a turn off the road John and Rodney had taken into town, in sight of the stadium and the unusually dry dry-docks. John asked about their purpose as they waited.

Carlos smiled his odd little smile. "At the moment? They're a monument to bureaucratic mismanagement. We're supposed to forget they ever existed."

"Seems like there's a lot of stuff you're supposed to do around here," John remarked, leaning against the car's hood.

"There is," Carlos said, "though less of it is without cause than you'd first assume. The reasons aren't usual...but there are reasons." His smile slanted wryly. "It's no more rules than Atlantis had, really."

"Point," John said. "I meant what I said, by the way—there's an open invitation, if you want back in. Or even if you don't..." He didn't see anything out here but sage and scrub grass, nowhere for a spy to lurk, and he didn't hear any helicopters; but he dropped his voice anyway. "Even if you don't come back to the SGC, if you want out, we can get you out of here. Rules or no rules."

Carlos's eyes widened in surprise. Before he could answer, a long blue towncar with opaque windows pulled up out of seemingly nowhere. The back door opened and Rodney came out, with a little stumble like he'd been shoved.

As he found his footing, the door slammed and the car pulled away, vanishing into a cloud of dust, possibly literally.

John ran over to his teammate. Rodney was blinking, blinded by the late afternoon sunlight; otherwise he appeared fine. "Rodney?" John asked, to be sure. "How you doing, buddy?"

"Sheppard?" Rodney peered up at him, shading his eyes with his hand. "Okay—I'm okay. You don't have to shoot anybody, I've been released—on parole, or else I finally convinced them I wasn't littering, the blowback from the helicopter just ripped that wrapper out of my hand—what did they take me for, I'm _Canadian_ , not some trash-tossing..." He gave his head a shake. "This has been a really weird...afternoon? Is it still afternoon?"

"Same day we got here," John confirmed.

"Oh," Rodney said; then he frowned with reassuring irritation. "Dammit!"

"What?"

"I only got to watch the premiere of the fourth season of Game of Thrones! Now I'll have to wait—months, at least, since they haven't started filming yet, last I checked."

"Oh, good," Carlos said. "You must have been in Radon Canyon—they put in HBO last year, but they're still working out the temporal synchronization. You're lucky, though, Dr. McKay. Most stays there are a lot longer."

"And you are?" Rodney squinted over at the other scientist. "Oh, that hair—Carlino?"

" _Carlos,_ " John muttered.

"—Carlos, right. Hi, Carlos, good to see you, et cetera. Has Sheppard explained why we're here?"

"He has," Carlos said, not sounding offended by Rodney's brusque tone. "Though I don't have any of my records on the geothermal modules, so I'm not sure how much help I'll be?"

"That's okay, I've got the project notes on my computer. Which should be back in the Jeep—if it hasn't been towed or incinerated for being in a no-parking-when-a-crow-caws zone or something," Rodney said crankily.

"Not on that street," Carlos said, so levelly that John couldn't tell if he was serious or not.

The two scientists spent the drive back into town discussing the module problem, crossing streams of technobabble that John only understood enough of to tell that Rodney was sounding as fine as he claimed to be. The one unusual thing was how rarely he derided Carlos's suggestions. Retired from Atlantis and mentally unstable though he might be, the other scientist clearly still knew his stuff.

John assumed that once they had collected Rodney's computer from the Jeep, they would head over to Carlos's lab. But Rodney was hungry and Carlos claimed he hadn't had his mandatory Big Rico's slice for the week, so they decided to go back to the pizzeria.

"Rodney," John hissed, "do I really need to explain 'top secret' to you?"

Rodney shrugged and muttered back, "Not like anything we're talking about will make sense to anyone—except maybe to Carlos's science team, at his lab?"

Which point John couldn't deny, and he wasn't about to let Rodney out of his sight again, so he reluctantly accompanied the scientists into the restaurant. This time, no one pointed at him or called for the cops, or dropped to their knees murmuring chants. Instead all the patrons offered them friendly grins and greetings, like they were long-lost townsfolk returned for a vacation.

The pizzeria was full for the evening, but a couple looking to be on a dinner date volunteered their booth to Carlos and moved over to a table with a couple of mysterious hooded figures, saying it was no trouble. The waitress brought over coffee and a plate of something the right color and smell of hot wings, though with an atypical number of pale claws poking through the orange sauce. She winked at Rodney as she set down the basket, saying, "Don't worry, Dr. McKay, nothing you're allergic to in these."

"Sure, thanks," Rodney said, grabbing a not-quite-wing without looking up from the diagrams on the tablet he and Carlos were paging through.

John eyed the woman suspiciously, but she just smiled and asked for his order.

Big Rico's calzones proved to be at least as unique as their pizza, filled with something that wasn't cheese at all, to judge by the sound it made when it was cut into. It tasted surprisingly wholesome in spite of that or its fresh pine scent.

After sunset, the desert's twilight rapidly darkened. John watched out the window as the purple sky fade to black and the old-fashioned streetlights guttered to dull life. On the radio, the host Cecil wound up an existential musing on the nature of journeys and signed off with a good night to the town. It was echoed by the pizzeria's patrons, who wished one another and Carlos the same, and departed as if on cue. Soon John and the scientists were the only ones left in the place, plus their waitress, who seemed to be staying around to refill their coffee cups as needed, and otherwise occupied herself reading a biography of Helen Hunt (and occasionally putting out the fires locks of her hair kept bursting into, by patting them with a damp dishcloth. She seemed to have the spontaneous combustion under control, so John opted to politely ignore it.)

John assumed the restaurant was closed, but a little while later the bell over the door tolled its funereal knell and Cecil entered, trailed by his switchboard operator. The teenager went to the waitress to collect a pick-up order, while Cecil came over and slid into the booth next to Carlos. "Good evening," he said.

Carlos greeted him with a distracted wave, leaning across the table to punctuate his argument with a stabbing motion at the tablet, "—No, I'm sorry, Dr. McKay, but the concern here isn't the primary conduit's capacity but the auxiliary—"

" _Obviously_ ," Rodney retorted, "any idiot could see that; but you can't possibly be so asinine to think that will compensate for the thermodynamic fluctuation—"

John tensed, unsure how Cecil would feel about Rodney taking that tone with his boyfriend; but Cecil just raised an eyebrow at John and asked, low enough not to interrupt the scientists, "Have they been like this all evening?"

"They're pretty much always like this," John replied. Even if he hadn't seen much of Carlos on Atlantis, it was an easy deduction, when it came to Rodney.

For all his monologuing on the radio—or maybe because of it?—Cecil wasn't inclined to talk now. Instead he sat quietly and listened to Carlos argue with a fond smile, stretching an arm across the top of the booth to idly tangle his fingers in the scientist's thick hair. Carlos appeared not to notice his attention, but soon sacrificed one of his hands for gesturing to slip his arm around Cecil's waist, a casual, unconscious intimacy that was bizarre only in how normal it was.

With the restaurant almost empty and the locals so nonchalant, John took the opportunity to relax. They had a long drive back tonight; while Night Vale probably had places to stay, he wasn't eager to spend the night at the Bates Motel or Overlook Hotel. He didn't dare doze off, not with Cecil sitting across from him; but he let his mind drift, the technical bickering fading into familiar white noise.

John tuned back in when he heard Carlos say, "—glad his pigeons are doing well, um, over there. And how are your teammates? Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex?"

"Fine, they're fine," Rodney said. "Well, Teyla's temporarily off-duty, pregnant with her third; but—"

"Emmagan?" Cecil asked. "Of the Athosian Emmagans, by any chance?"

"Say what now?" John asked, leveling a sharp look across the table at Carlos. "Doc, I hate to be a stickler, but non-disclosure means—"

But Carlos looked astonished, staring at his boyfriend. "I've never mentioned—?"

"No, not that I can recall," Cecil said, "but we had a few Athosian dream-hikers come through—oh, maybe a hundred years ago? By all accounts, a lovely people—they were looking for a place to settle and the City Council offered, but they said we were a bit out of the way, and also that the wraiths here were even scarier than the ones they had."

John made a mental note to ask Teyla about dream-hikers.

"It's a shame she couldn't come," Cecil continued, oblivious to their surprise, "it would've been neat to meet a woman of Athos in the flesh and blood."

"Maybe another time," John said noncommittally. Putting aside the security breaches and the troubling question of what Cecil might want to _do_ with such flesh or blood, he was glad that Teyla and Ronon hadn't been given Earth leave this time around. They already had a less than positive view of the planet, after the international politicking that had delayed Atlantis's return to Pegasus. John would just as soon skip having to explain Night Vale. He had serious doubts he'd emerge from the experience with his sanity intact.

"Oh well," Cecil said, placing his hand over Carlos's on the table. "You'll just have to tell me about her."

"I don't really have the security clearances to talk about Teyla," Carlos said, "and besides I only met her a couple of times. Sorry I can't introduce you..." He turned his wrist to interlace his fingers with Cecil's, thumb moving in an apologetic caress.

Cecil wasn't too put out. He was gazing at Carlos in a way that John couldn't interpret, for all that it felt oddly familiar: a weird look that wasn't just fondness or desire or admiration, or anything else John could put words to. It made him uncomfortable like Cecil's smile made him uncomfortable, like this was something that should be spoken rather than shown, described rather than seen.

Though Carlos didn't seem to mind, smiling back at Cecil, not odd and wry but sweetly. And Rodney was, like with most interpersonal things, as sensitive as a steamroller. "Yes, well, sorry Teyla couldn't make it this time, and hopefully there won't be a next time, if we've got this problem worked out as well as you seem to think. You've got an, um, interesting town here; but we're busy men, have a lot of important work to do in more impor—" John stepped on his foot and Rodney revised, "— _other_ important places."

"Of course," Carlos said, nudging Cecil to let him out from the booth. "You have my current email address, so contact me if any problems come up in the implementation. I should be able to keep the server online and existing on this plane of reality at least as often as you can dial in."

Rodney stared at him for a split second, then shook his head and said, "Yes, great, that'll be helpful," with a sort of determined ignorance. He bundled the tablet and peripherals up in his arms and plowed outside. John tossed a tip onto the table, grabbed the cord he'd missed and headed out after his teammate.

Carlos followed, and Cecil followed him, sticking close. Too close. John elbowed Rodney, tilting his head meaningfully at the other two.

They'd worked together long enough that Rodney didn't need further instruction. He snapped his fingers, said in his best intimidating-lab-techs voice, "Hey, Cecil, is it? Come help me load this gear in the Jeep, need to make sure it can't rattle around. No, not like that! Just hold this, while I—"

With Cecil occupied, John tapped Carlos on the shoulder. "Hey, Doc, join me for a sec? Got a bit of security business before we head out," and he ushered the scientist under the awning of the closed barbershop, in the shadows between the circles of light cast by the streetlamps. "Does anyone have eyes on us now?" John asked in an undertone.

"The secret police," Carlos answered promptly, "but this area happens to be a sonic dead-zone at this time of night, so just don't move your lips too much. If the conversation stays short we'll avoid suspicion. Is there a particular peril to Earth that I should know about?"

"Not that I know of," John said. "This is just the standard non-disclosure deal, you know the drill. You promise not to talk about any of this research to anyone outside the SGC, right? Then sign here," and he brought up the form on his phone, handed it over for Carlos to sign with his finger.

As Carlos did, John leaned over casually, as if reading over his shoulder, to whisper into the scientist's ear, "You want out of here, just say the word. If you don't think you can make it now, we'll come back for you. You may not officially be with the SGC anymore, but you were part of the Atlantis team, and we don't leave our people behind."

"Oh," Carlos said. "Ah. Thank you, but that won't be necessary, Colonel."

Though his gaze, as he said it, crossed John's shoulder, to fall on Cecil, standing by the Jeep holding Rodney's tablet. The man's head was turned toward them, though under the streetlight his eyes were in shadow, black holes in his face, impossible to tell what he was looking at.

"If you're being coerced," John whispered, "if that guy, or anyone else here, has some hold over you—"

"It isn't like that," Carlos said, not defensive or nervous but composed. "Not at all. I can guess what it might look like...there's a lot of things it might look like, really; that's one of the things about Night Vale, that just about everything here can look like something else, depending on where you are when you look at it. But whatever you're thinking now, it's not that."

He took a breath, let it out in a thoughtful sigh. "I don't know how to explain this, Colonel. When I originally signed on to Atlantis, I knew the risks; I knew the odds of it being a one-way trip. I accepted that; the danger was worth it, because I thought it was where I wanted to be. And actually being on Atlantis proved to be so much more—it was an incredible opportunity, and I valued every minute of it. But in the end, when the city was back on Earth, it wasn't hard to leave. I got another offer and I didn't even think about it twice. I won't say I never regretted it afterwards—but it was time for me to move on.

"When I came here to Night Vale, I didn't have any idea what I was getting into. I don't know if it'd be possible to really grasp it, to have the proper context, outside—but now, living here, I understand. I know how dangerous it is, believe me. Things happen here every day that show me how deep I've gotten, how far out of my depth I am. If you knew how often what I learn now contradicts all the knowledge I devoted the rest of my life to studying—it's unsettling, and frustrating, and often, frankly terrifying.

"And...I can't leave it. All I do here in Night Vale—all that's done for me here—I can't tell you what it means to me. More than Atlantis; more than anywhere I've ever been. This place, this town, it's..."

John thought of how assuredly Carlos had navigated the impossible back alleys and intermittent crosswalks, how happily the people in the pizzeria greeted at him. Thought about Cecil's shadowed eyes watching them now, and Carlos smiling at him before.

"It's where you're supposed to be," John said. "Where you want to be."

"Always," Carlos said. He sounded frightened and euphoric and _certain_ ; and John maybe didn't get his reasons—but he understood, all the same.

"All right," John said, taking his back his phone. "Then I guess this is goodbye, Doc. Thanks a lot for your help, if Rodney hasn't said it yet. We owe you."

Carlos caught his sleeve before he turned away. "One more thing, Colonel," he murmured. "You have the Ancient gene, right?"

John nodded. "My DNA is why I was sent on the original expedition. Rodney's got it, too, by gene graft."

Carlos nodded. "I also have it, a natural expression; hence the SGC tapping me for Atlantis. Thank you, Colonel, this answers a question I've had for some time." He glanced again at Cecil, looking—relieved?—and John almost asked him what that question was, whether it was anything he should be worried about.

But Rodney by the Jeep was starting to literally tap his foot, and it already was going to be well past midnight by the time they made it back to Area 51. And that was if the drive back was the same distance as the drive here, which given Night Vale geography, John was doubtful about. "Okay, all aboard, Rodney; time to go."

Rodney shot John a look, angling his chin at Carlos in question. 

John shook his head in reply. Rodney frowned, then shrugged and offered Carlos and Cecil a perfunctory goodbye as he clambered into the Jeep. He was mulling over the info Carlos had given him, John could tell, most of his mind already back on Atlantis. It was going to be a quiet ride, unless he got stuck and needed an ear to rant at. John was good either way; Rodney would have a solution by the time they returned to Pegasus, and that was what mattered.

"Goodbye, Doctor, Colonel," Carlos said. "Have a good trip back, and I hope the repairs go well—please give everyone there my regards."

"Farewell, Dr. McKay, Colonel Sheppard," Cecil said. "Come back and visit our humble little town—visit our Carlos, any time." Though he wasn't looking at John as he said it; his eyes were on Carlos, with that strange uninterpretable look again. Only out here, under the pale streetlights and the shadows of the huddled buildings, John recognized it.

Not a friend regarding a friend; not a captor gloating over a prisoner, either. Not a man adoring his lover, even—the feeling was the same, but the scope was too large for a man's face, too great for mere human eyes to hold. It reminded John of stepping through the Stargate for the first time, onto Atlantis. Of the city lighting up under his boots and over his head, arches and stairways and crystal spires all shining in welcome; and John was three million light-years from the planet he'd been born on and, for the first time in his life, realized what it felt like to come home.

If Atlantis had a face, had eyes to look at him; if Atlantis had a voice to call him _ours_...

"Goodbye, Doc," John said, getting into the Jeep. "Good luck. And you take care of him," he added, nodding at Cecil through the window.

Cecil smiled his not-quite-human smile, wrapping a possessive arm around Carlos's waist as he raised his other hand to wave goodbye. "We shall."


End file.
